WORKPAPERS CS

Antivirus guidelines for CS Professional Suite applications

Thomson Reuters emphasizes the importance of working in a secure environment that includes up-to-date antivirus, antimalware, and firewall solutions when using our CS Professional Suite as well as other applications for processing and storing information for your firm and your clients. Please consult with a qualified IT professional when selecting, implementing, and configuring antivirus, antimalware, and firewall solutions for your firm's network and workstations. Taking appropriate antivirus measures is imperative to ensuring your firm's standards of software performance, stability, and data integrity.

Do not temporarily disable your antivirus as an alternative to setting the recommended exceptions. Many antivirus programs continue to run after being disabled, which means that undesired antivirus intervention can occur.

See also: Firewall guidelines for CS Professional Suite applications

Antivirus configuration

Antivirus applications are designed to detect, prevent, contain, and disarm or remove viruses, spyware, malware, and other malicious software and to protect your workstation or server environment from harmful and unknown threats.

• Be sure that your antivirus application is appropriate for your operating system. Some antivirus applications do not perform well on certain server operating systems and could cause network delays.
• Because antivirus scanning consumes many resources, consider scheduling automatic scans during off-business hours.
• If your firm has an antivirus application installed on both workstations and servers, do not allow the workstations to perform real-time scanning on server drives. Letting the server scan its own drives reduces network delays and minimizes interference with network traffic. Refer to your antivirus provider's instructions to determine how to turn off the real-time scanning of network drives.

Many antivirus programs provide automatic protection (commonly known as real-time protection) that runs continuously while a computer is in use. Real-time protection could potentially interfere with the performance, functionality, or data integrity of a CS Professional Suite application and could negatively impact productivity by slowing the speed of the application, by preventing the application from launching, and even by corrupting data.

Antivirus applications typically allow configuration options to exclude trusted sources from real-time protection. This topic lists recommended specifications for antivirus exclusions and exceptions to help ensure best performance of our CS Professional Suite applications.

Excluding specific folders from the scan

Certain antivirus applications allow exclusions or exceptions from real-time protection for specific folder locations. For all locally installed CS Professional Suite applications, Thomson Reuters recommends excluding the WinCSI folder. Also, please refer to the additional information below as applicable to your firm.

Accounting CS

Engagement CS

FileCabinet CS

Planner CS

Practice CS

SQL-based CS Professional Suite applications

UltraTax CS

Virtual Office CS or Software as a Service (SaaS) environment

Workpapers CS

Excluding specific executable files from the scan

Some antivirus applications may not allow exclusions for entire folders but do allow exclusions for specific files. Listed below are the application-specific recommended exclusions for the CS Professional Suite.

Antivirus applications may also track the file size, version, or other attributes of the executable files for which exclusions have already been defined. As a result, you may need to redefine these exclusions within your antivirus application from time to time as updates are applied.

Accounting CS

FileCabinet CS

Fixed Assets CS

Planner CS

Practice CS

SQL-based CS Professional Suite applications

UltraTax CS

Virtual Office CS or SaaS environment

Workpapers CS

Excluding specific file types from the scan

Some antivirus applications allow exclusions for specific file extensions. Listed below are file-type extensions for applications in the CS Professional Suite that can be excluded from real-time scanning.

Application	File Extensions
Accounting CS	same as SQL Server: .mdf, .ldf, .bdf, .bak
FileCabinet CS	.ccd, .cci
Planner CS	.udx
Practice CS	same as SQL Server: .mdf, .ldf, .bdf, .bak
SQL Server	.mdf, .ldf, .bdf, .bak
UltraTax CS	.ut*, .zpd (where * represents any character)
Virtual Office CS or SaaS environment	.ica
Workpapers CS	same as SQL Server: .mdf, .ldf, .bdf, .bak

Protecting against spyware and malware

You should be aware of the possibility that computer programs could be installed on workstations without your knowledge or consent, sometimes along with the operating system or an application. Furthermore, spyware and malware can be discretely added to computers via the internet and can dramatically affect network performance by running in the background, consuming large amounts of bandwidth and memory.

When implementing antispyware and antimalware applications, you may need to create exclusions and exemptions within those applications (similar to those suggested above for antivirus applications) to prevent interference with CS Professional Suite applications. We suggest that your firm's qualified IT professional review and install antispyware and antimalware applications that meet the needs of your firm.

Troubleshooting performance issues

To determine whether background applications are slowing your network, first disable all background applications. The method of doing this varies by operating system, but in most instances restarting the computer in selective startup mode will prevent those processes from starting. If your network speed improves by disabling background processes, you should take steps to prevent those processes from loading on startup. Because the method of disabling applications can vary, you should consult with your firm's qualified IT professional.

Configuring commonly used antivirus/antimalware applications

Thomson Reuters does not endorse a specific vendor or product for antivirus protection. If you require additional assistance configuring your antivirus application, please contact your software vendor. Listed below are common antivirus vendors and links for support assistance.

• avast!
• Avira
• AVG
• Bitdefender
• ESET
• Kaspersky
• Malwarebytes
• McAfee
• Microsoft Security Essentials
• Panda
• Symantec
• Trend Micro
• VIPRE